As sad as it sounds, most of us experience the world through photographs. Now MIT software engineers are taking that idea literally and mapping Flickr photos to regional maps in The World's Eyes project.

By pulling GPS metadata from uploaded photos (and then skinning that data in a neat 3D visualization), users can see how photographers/tourists see a given area. There's overlap, yes, but that's entirely the point. It's a project more about capturing stereotypes (like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Statue of Liberty in NY), than giving a Google Street View objective turn by turn of an area. Add tags like "party" to the mix, and that worldview is altered in very interesting, less predictable ways.

As strange as this may sound, I could totally picture this visualizer on the PlayStation 3. The platform has focused quite a bit on a unique photo experience, and the style isn't so far from Sony's. All they'd really need to do is network it. [MIT via GearCrave]